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One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things~
We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
from "The Tables Turned"
William Wordsworth

The Romantic Age
1798~1832

The Romantic Age was a new age in British literature, an age in which writers "turned the tables" on eighteenth~century thinking, insisting that the world be viewed through the heart, not the mind. During this period, which was named by historians during the late 1800's, nearly all the attitudes and tendencies of eighteenth~century classicism and rationalism were redefined or changed dramatically.

The Beginnings of Romanticism

Writers of the Romantic Age reacted strongly to the events of their time. They felt stirrings of excitement or repulsion as they contemplated the French Revolution. They saw the dramatic changes being wrought by the Industrial Revolution and longed for the simplicity and purity of the past. They sensed the rumblings of discontent and desperation that could not be silenced, even by the repressive measures of the war years. Those who had applauded the French Revolution, envisioning a new age of democracy and equality in Britain, were left in a state of bitter disappointment. They turned their attention to literary endeavors, creating a Romantic style that offered a new perspective on the world~a perspective that focused on nature and "the common people."

The Romantic Age in British Poetry

Romanticism was a movement that affected not only literature but all the arts. In music, it produced such brilliant European composers as Germany's Ludwig van Beethoven (1770~1827), and Austria's Franz Schubert (1797~1828), but no one of comparable stature in Britain. In painting, it influenced the intensely personal and warmly spontaneous rural landscapes of Britain's John Constable (1776~1837) and J.M.W. Turner (1775~1851). However, it is for literature and especially for poetry, that Britain's Romantic Age is most famous.

The Romantic Age in British Prose

Poetry was the dominant literary form during the Romantic Age, but not the only one. Many significant prose works also appeared, mainly in the form of essays and novels. This was a dry period for drama; only two theaters were licensed to produce plays, and they tended to feature popular spectacles rather than serious plays. However, Shelley and other poets did write closet dramas, verse works intended to be read rather than produced on stage.

The Romantic Essayists

British readers of the Romantic Age could find brilliant literary criticism and topical essays in a variety of new periodicals. The earliest of these periodicals reflected the conservative and neoclassical ideals of an earlier age; they roundly condemned the Romantic poets and their work. In time, however, periodicals that were more sympathetic to the Romantics came into being.

The Romantic Novelists

Unlike the Romantic poets, the novelists of the Romantic Age did not make a sharp break with the past. In fact, the three main types of Romantic novel--the Gothic novel, the novels of manners, and the historical romance--all represented claborations on earlier forms.

The Gothic novel first appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. It featured a number of standard ingredients, including brave heroes and heroines, threatening scoundrels, vast eerie castles and ghosts. The Romantic fascination with mystery and the supernatural made such novels quite popular during the Romantic Age. One of the most successful was Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, written in 1818 by Shelley's wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797~1851).

The Romantic novel of manners carried on in the tradition of earlier writers by turning a satirical eye on British customs. The most highly regarded writer of novels if manners was Jane Austen (1775~1817), whose works include Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813). Her incisive portrayals of character are more reflective of the classical sensibility of the eighteenth century than the Romantic notions of the new age.

Historical romances--imaginative works of fiction built around a real person or historical event--had appeared long before the Romantic Age, but they attained their peak of popularity in the work of Sir Walter Scott (1771~1832). Passionately devoted to his native Scottland, Scott wrote about the days of knights and chivalry. Although he expressed a Scottish nationalism not unlike the nationalism of Germany's Romantic writers, Scott remained popular with England's ruling class, who apparently did not view his tales of a bygone age as a threat to the staus quo.

The close of Britain's Romantic Age is usually set in 1832, the year of the passage of the First Reform Bill. However, the ideas of Romanticism remained a strong influence on many writers from following generations. In fact, even today we can detect elements of Romanticism in many major works of comtemporary fiction and poetry as well as in TV dramas, movies, and popular songs.

The information on this page came from Prentice Hall Literature The British Tradition. Copyright is 1994, 1991, 1989 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey